Over 350 global landmarks went dark for an hour on Saturday night, to honor Earth Hour. From Big Ben to the Empire State Building; the Eiffel Tower to the Sydney Opera House; Piccadilly Circus, Time Square, Tokyo Tower, and hundreds of famous buildings and cities in over 172 participating countries, it was lights out at 8.30 pm local time, for 60 minutes.

Beginning as an initiative from WWF in Sydney in 2007, this year’s Earth Hour was a celebration of ‘Places We Love,’ such as beaches, rivers, mountains, national parks, reefs and forests, which are all at risk as a result of climate change.

Norlha produces luxury accessories and home products from Yak fiber in Tibet. Embracing values, quality and craftsmanship as well as ancestral wisdom and hope in their work, the Norlha collection covers a vast array of wraps, scarves, and throws as well as textiles for the interior market. Previously considered a rough raw material used only for felting and rugged blankets, Norlha have managed to transform the fiber into an exceptional product that links the Tibetan Plateau to the luxury market. Building a base for the local economy, the idea behind Norlha was to capitalize on the rich raw materials that the nomad population manage, by transforming this precious raw materials in the place of origin, for the benefit of the community, and generating gainful employment

The Yak traditionally provides everything neccessary for Tibetans, including meat, milk, hide and fiber. Yak khullu is the precious brown fiber that insulates the Yak from the cold, and is the natural response of a harsh environment at altitudes of more that 2,500 meters. Grazing on the Tibetan Plateau, the Yak provide the Tibetan nomads with much of what they need to survive, and are a means of measuring wealth locally. With 13 million yaks on the Tibetan plateau, and herds of up to 400 head, the animals sustain around three million Tibetan nomads. As the female Yak give birth every spring, this allows for milking every day, right through to the fall, and herders transform the rich nutritious milk into butter and yogurt for consumption.

Traditionally khullu brings little income to herders, and is normally only collected on demand and sold to middlemen who transport the product for weaving elsewhere, resulting in little profit for the herders. Unlike goats, Yak cannot be combed. The soft down that detaches itself naturally in May, has to be removed before it falls off and is discarded. Although generally even-tempered animals, the Yak have to be tied and laid on the ground to have their khullu removed, a time consuming and hazerdous task that does not harm the animals. Since the sale of khullu has traditionally not yielded much income for the nomads, and is in conflict with other, more lucrative activities, Norlha had to spend years to promote their Yak fiber project by setting up three collecting stations where nomads could sell their wool year round. By purchasing directly from herders, and bypassing the middlemen, allowed Norlha to offer a better price for the fiber to the herders.

Norlha carefully select and buy only the best Yak fiber, then supervise the washing and de-hairing process before sorting and separating qualities suitable for yarn or felting. Fiber is separated by quality as well as by color, with the rarer gray and beige, the most prized. The yarn is dyed in house, and the traditional Indian Charkha wheel is used for spinning, with imported Indian shuttle looms for weaving. The fiber itself has unique characteristics that include softness, ruggedness and great warmth, and it’s longer lasting than cashmere, which is currently under threat due to climate change.

Ibrahim AlHusseini is a man on a mission. He’s coined a term “Solution Economy” to marry the largest concentration of capital in history, our investment dollars, with the largest market opportunity we have even been presented with, reversing climate change and saving earth’s life support system from collapsing. Said another way, he’s addressing the worldwide environmental crises through the free market system, one company at a time. His current focus? Our bewildering waste problem, starting with municipal solid waste.

Since starting his first business at 19, Husseini has spent the past two decades championing environmental sustainability and social change, using his acumen in finance to become an impact focused investor, or better yet, a purpose driven investor with a big impact.

After numerous successful business ventures Husseini began his career in venture capital and was presented with a real estate deal by a highly intelligent individual who he had come to respect greatly. As Husseini learned more about the opportunity he saw the profitability potential but also how the deal was not going to positively impact the local community or provide hope to the growing number of environmental and social issues he was becoming more deeply concerned about. So, instead of taking the deal he turned it down and decided focus on investments that could truly change the world and create a better future for us all.

FullCycle Energy Fund in 2013. Husseini designed FullCycle to revolutionize our relationship to waste and turn a costly, global environmental crisis into benefits that address critical energy and environmental concerns. This fund is the first of its kind to devote its entirety toward transforming municipal waste into clean energy to power communities across the globe at a wider scale than ever before.

“Solving our world’s growing waste problems through innovative Waste-To-Energy technology like we are doing at FullCycle Fund not only helps keep plastic from our oceans but also pushes the energy industry towards a new and much better path. This is so crucial right now because this path lessens the burden of waste and dirty energy placed on the environment,” says Husseini.

He also recognizes that our current methods of dealing with waste like landfills require large amounts of land and pose public health issues by producing greenhouses gases and runoff.

To make FullCycle Energy as successful as possible Husseini partnered with Synova, a waste-to-energy project developer. Synova’s state-of-the-art technology has eliminated greenhouse gas emissions by 98% when compared to municipal solid waste in landfills.

Award-winning photographer and documentary film-maker, polar explorer and activist, Sebastian Copeland continues to trek our arctic lands as an advocate for the environment, visually capturing the essence of places very few humans have ever seen. He has authored six books and journeyed 5,000 miles on skis, leading expeditions across the Arctic sea, Greenland and Antarctica, reaching both North and South Poles on foot. Copeland also founded SEDNA: The Copeland Foundation, which is dedicated to preventing Arctic drilling for oil, and also sits on the board of directors of President Gorbachev’s Global Green USA.

An international speaker on the climate change crisis, he has addressed audiences across the globe, including at the United Nations, World Affairs Council, universities and Fortune 500 companies, speaking about systemic changes in the Polar regions and the urgent need for a market transformation towards a sustainable future.

“Globally, our collective passivity on climate change is slowly shifting thanks to irrefutable science and dramatic natural events, but we still face powerful deniers and are a long shot from taking conclusive action,” Copeland explains. “In the end, we are the ones who have the most to lose, but also the ones who can effectuate change. We vote with our purchases, thereby sending a clear message to the business community. And watch what you put at the end of your fork.”

Copeland has now released his latest book, Arctica: The Vanishing North(teNeues), which illustrates the breath-taking beauty, splendor and vulnerability of this pristine landscape, capturing our imagination through mesmerizing imagery. Through his passion and photography, Copeland hopes to raise awareness of the threat to this last true wilderness on the planet, while seducing and inspiring us into action to make critical changes for a cleaner and healthier world.